A fetish with extreme precision? More than 4 digits is specialty territory???
Sacrilege!!
Everyone needs an 8.5 digit multimeter. How else are you going to tell if your 7.5 digit multimeter is accurate??
Well I didn't say there was anything wrong with extreme precision, I just recognize that I myself rarely need more than 2-3 decimal places, for the stuff I do anything more is just superfluous data that I round off in my head. That doesn't mean there are not perfectly valid needs for higher precision, I just haven't generally encountered them. I don't care if the power rail in something I'm working on is 3.30V or 3.2985372V, it's not going to make a difference to circuit operation.
It's also important to differentiate between accuracy and precision.
It was a joke, son, a joke! (said in my best Foghorn Leghorn voice...)
I'm a big fan of using the right tool for the job myself, and agree that most jobs aren't going to require a great deal of precision.
It's a bit of a trade off as to how much precision to get. If you have extra precision, you'll have lower precision requirements covered automatically, but if all you have is relatively low precision equipment then you probably won't be able to perform work that requires more, at least not without a great deal of ingenuity. So I suspect you're best off getting as much precision as you can afford and that you think you might ever use (but see below).
For myself, I suspect 5.5 digits is sufficient for anything I might do. So my Instek 8251a and Amprobe 140 should provide enough for even the most precise work I might find myself doing.
It becomes trickier when one is on a substantially restricted budget. Then you might have to give up a little precision for one thing just to be able to acquire some other capability at all.
It's impressive how much capability you can get for relatively little money these days...
And yes, it is indeed important to be mindful of the difference between precision and accuracy. Note, however, that precision limits usable accuracy, which is why higher precision equipment generally has better accuracy specs as well (when calibrated, of course).
(Sent with Tapatalk, so apologies for the lackluster formatting)